Thursday, May 2, 2013

Cubs move talk a whole load of bunk?

Am
I the only one who thinks all the talk these days about the Chicago Cubs “moving”
(all over the front pages of newspapers and on broadcasts and websites) is a whole lot of nonsense?

How much will Wrigley change if Ricketts gets his way?

If
ever there was a time when our government officials ought to take a hard line
and not let themselves get intimidated by a professional sports team, it is
this time now.

FOR
THE RECORD, Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts made comments implying he’d consider
moving his family’s ball club if city and Lake View neighborhood officials aren’t
more sympathetic to the renovations they want to make so that Wrigley Field
becomes more like other new stadiums – as in containing features that the team
can justify charging top dollar for.

Is
this just a reiteration of the previously-expressed threat to push for a new
stadium to be built at a suburban location? Is Ricketts really threatening to
move the National League’s only charter member to play in its original city
(the Braves were in Boston and Milwaukee before moving to Atlanta 46 years
ago)?

Or
is it just a load of hot air that means nothing?

Because
when I listen to what Ricketts actually said, I don’t hear anything that’s new.
Other than a would-be bully being upset that the other kids in the schoolyard
are actually standing up to him!

PERHAPS
THAT LINE is a bit harsh. Because I personally could care less what the Cubs
do. Considering that I don’t really care much what they do on the field, why
should I care where that “field” is located?

Yankee Stadium lost a lot of character ...

I
just don’t hear any credible threat. If anything, we were a lot closer back in
1988 to losing the Chicago White Sox than we ever will be to losing the Cubs
(we Chicagoans couldn’t be so lucky as to get rid of that “lovable loser” image
the Cubs hang around our collective necks).

The
day that the Cubs sign a lease to play in another city’s stadium (even if that “city”
is just a dinky suburb like Schaumburg, and which the White Sox actually did with
St. Petersburg, Fla.) is the day that the talk of moving should be countered
seriously.

Until
then, it just doesn’t mean much.

... when it was renovated, and even more when it was replaced

BECAUSE
I SENSE that Ricketts and his siblings aren’t dumb enough to think they’d be
better off playing anywhere else other than the humble abode of one Elwood J.
Blues.

That
century-old building is so much a part of the ball club’s character that they
are the one team that ought to seriously disregard thoughts of playing anywhere
else. No matter now unique or fine the new structure might turn out to be,
there are too many people who go to see the one-time Cubs Park.

Just
ask all those people who wear “Wrigley Field” jerseys to ballgames!

It’s
like the New York Yankees, who had the sense in the early 1970s to not think of
going to New Jersey and arranged for an overhaul of Yankee Stadium. Let’s only
hope that the Cubs aren’t foolish enough to ruin the character of Wrigley in
the same way that the Yankees did with their building that wound up servicing
the team through 2008.

THAT’S
THE REAL reason I’m skeptical of all the Wrigley renovation talk that focuses
around giant video boards and the need for video advertising boards and a “Captain
Morgan” club for people to spend more of their money in.

Just as much a part of Wrigley lore

Because
at least the Yankees could still claim the playing field of the renovated park
was the same place where the immortals like Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle
played winning baseball for so many decades.

What
could the Cubs claim if they turn Wrigley into a commercialized mess? A story
about how a black cat once pranced on this field and freaked the Cubs out to
the point where they lost.

Or
maybe it will come back to Babe Ruth? Future Cubs fans will say, “On this field
now surrounded by commercialized nonsense, Babe Ruth hit a home run that caused
our Cubs to lose, yet again!”

I am a Chicago-area freelance writer who has reported on various political and legal beats. I wrote "Hispanic" issues columns for United Press International, observed up close the Statehouse Scene in Springfield, Ill., the Cook County Board in Chicago and municipal government in Gary, Ind. For a time, I also wrote about agriculture. Trust me when I say the symbolic stench of partisan politics (particularly when directed against people due to their ethnicity) is far nastier than any odor that could come from a farm animal.